The Hindsight tropes, Hilarious in Hindsight, Harsher in Hindsight, and Heartwarming in Hindsight, are among the most misused Audience Reaction tropes on this site. Many people don't understand that the tropes require more than just "This happened, so that happened", and end up adding examples which either lack connection or the substance that makes them funny/serious/not-so-funny/heartwarming. Some of them may be suited better for other tropes (ex: Life Imitates Art), while some may not belong on TV Tropes at all (such as ones involving politicians, due to Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment).
Please report any Hindsight example that you feel are questionable, and we'll analyze them to see if they are actually examples or not.
Remember that the Hindsight tropes are Audience Reactions. That means if an example under review discusses significant fan response pointing out the hindsight, the example can't be cut solely for being too tenuous for this thread.
- Creator's character/portrayal dies in work and then creator dies in real life, unless their fictional death is closely similar to their real one (such as Billy Bob Joe portraying a character who dies from pancreatic cancer, then Billy Bob dies from pancreatic cancer himself)
- Mundane word related to something terrible (such as "corona" or "Epstein") unless there's more to the connection (such as someone named "Corona" having the flu)
- Creator appears in work then becomes more controversial later on.
- A common event (such as a typical natural disaster) happens in work, then happens in real life (unless they are closely similar, such as the event happening to the same area in both reality and fiction around the same time) For once, not everything related to disease has to do with COVID-19, not everything related to racism and Police Brutality has to do with George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, and not everything related to sexual abuse has to do with #MeToo.
- A common/generic concept was used in this work and then later reused in that work (too loose for a connection, unless the concept is so unique it's identified with the work)
- Two actors appear together then do so in another work
- Hindsight examples involving recent events, due to them often being shoehorns. Specifically:
- COVID-19 examples, before 75% of the population has returned to normal
- George Floyd/2020 Black Lives Matter examples, before protests have declined
- Examples which fall guilty of Older Than They Think, such as "Make X Great Again" slogans. Aside from violating the ROCEJ, this slogan has been in use since the 1940s.
- Characters using slurs which are treated as annoying at worst in the work, but is now harsher due to how severe the slur is made now. Discrimination has always existed with that slur. (May qualify for Values Dissonance if work is at least 20 years old.)
Note: As of January 2022, "Funny Aneurysm" Moment is no longer separate from Harsher in Hindsight.
- The former redirects to the latter and all wicks to the former (with the exception of ones on archive pages and the YMMV Redirects index) must either be moved to the latter (if they're valid) or removed (if they're invalid).
- The subpages for the former are still accessible from this page
. After a subpage for "Funny Aneurysm" Moment has been completely cleaned up, turn it into a redirect to the Harsher in Hindsight subpage for the same medium to preserve inbounds.
Edited by Tabs on Jun 21st 2023 at 11:51:25 AM
Yeah, I'll stick my two cents in: the example could use more context, but it is objectively true that people found the World Trade Center-related parts of the episode (and the brochure cover) Harsher in Hindsight. Yes, a lot of that was recency bias towards a very high-profile atrocity, but we should still be allowed to mention it.
Yeah this isn't "generic unrelated building gets blown up" or "the WTC appears for a few seconds in the background with no plot relevance", this is an actual example that has been referenced many times. (the 9/11 bus ad is probably the most infamous "Simpsons predicted the future" scene in the entire series.)
YMMV.Bakuten Shoot Beyblade has these examples:
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The English dub's atrocious one-liners and puns have a more humorous charm when you hear Rei say one in Carlos's voice (they are both voiced by Daniel DeSanto). Not hindsight since Magic School Bus came before Beyblade, actor trivia, and also complaining
- Gordo looks a lot like Android 16 from Dragon Ball, which is funny enough among some other DB-esque designs like Team Psychic's trackers. But in 2014, Akira Toriyama revealed that Android 16 is modeled after Doctor Gero's dead son. This makes the Zeo-Gordo team-up all the more appropriate. Fan Myopia
- Kyouju was considered a rather weak blader, known for his spring-loaded jumping Beyblade. Come the 6th season of Beyblade Burst, the World Champion, Valt Aoi's bey possesses the exact same ability (and its low win rate). This is the only one that can stay on since it's the same franchise
I say delete the first two.
Found these on YMMV.Discworld:
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- As more than one fan has pointed out,
Greebo's human form (which is often described as looking like 'the more louche kind of buccaneer' and often has an eye-patch to cover his blind eye) bears a startling resemblance to Euron Greyjoy.
- Death is a socially inept skeleton with glowing blue eyes who speaks in strange fonts. Sounds like a Composite Character prototype for Papyrus and Sans, doesn't he?
- As more than one fan has pointed out,
Pure Fan Myopia both. Any objection to me cutting them?
Yeah, I don't want to speak for all Discworld fans but I doubt that's been a common connection, given the episodic nature of the individual books. Feel free to cut.
ETA: I don't want to get too nitpicky/pretentious (I'm already a Discworld fan, so that's not a good look), but more specifically "common connection" and "commonly agreed connection" are a bit different. The Tumblr post is just some other fans noting "Wow, that's something I've never noticed before, but they are kind of similar", not "As more than one fan has pointed out". The same could be said about Doofenshmirtz having a similar hairstyle and Pollyanna-ish personality to Butters, which works better for X Meets Y.
Edited by Coachpill on Jan 16th 2024 at 9:11:41 AM
Your goateed philistine is sashaying towards us. | 🧱I just spotted this under Harsher in Hindsight in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
- Since the first game came out, players have wondered why the immensely popular Steel Samurai was cancelled after just 13 episodes (which it should be stated, weren't even completed) when the murder was an accident involving self defence and the studio continuing with the franchise immediately after. In 2023, media studios (Warner in particular) began cancelling entire completed or partially completed projects for tax write-offs, meaning the Steel Samurai was likely a victim of this practice. The huge lay-offs of 2023 (both in exchange for AI's subpar but cheaper work and to make a fraction of people do the work of 3 times as many people) also seem to have hit Global Studios, if Oldbag can be trusted about entire departments being cut out (something Powers doesn't dispute).
This... is an insane entry for several reasons.
- First, I have never heard of anyone being confused as to why Steel Samurai (an in-universe Toku show) only lasted 13 episodes. I personally saw it, and the fact that it is immediately has a successor show, as just a reference to how real Toku shows tend to have short single-season runs (see how Super Sentai and Kamen Rider essentially reboot themselves every year).
- A high-profile murder involving the mafia is a good-enough reason for a small production company in fictionland to suffer a downturn in my opinion.
- Absolutely nowhere in Ace Attorney is it ever implied that tax write-offs have anything to do with Steel Samurai's production, so claiming that it 'was likely a victim of this practice' is an absurd reach.
- The emphasis on the year 2023 as impacting the fictional Global Studios is also weird; Ace Attorney is set in 2016.
- Again, AI isn't a factor in this specific story, the mention of layoffs is meant to just be about Global Studios being a minor backwater production company.
This entry is 'fictional production company is troubled, that's harsher because real production companies have a completely unrelated set of problems'. Please let me purge this.
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Yeah, that's a crazy stretch. Steel Samurai ended because one of its lead actors was murdered, not because of AI or tax writeoffs.
Also, the same troper added another Harsher In Hindsight bullet on Nancy Drew that seems pretty problematic:
"As of 2020, Silent Spy's plot about unleashing a lab-developed virus meant to bring the world to its knees is much more uncomfortable, what with the conspiracy theories about the coronavirus being exactly that."
Edited by LoveBird on Jan 16th 2024 at 7:53:35 AM
That's an easy cut. It's a very blatant COVID shoehorn.
(x3) At this rate, we should add a warning to people who try to shoehorn ANY In-Universe show having its production halted because of something bad happening behind the scenes with real-life corpos cancelling projects mid-way through while also using AI to replace the people who work there. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes COVID-19 shoehorn 2.0.
Any objections to me cutting the Discworld entries in
x6? Both are pure Fan Myopia.
No objections. Your free to snip them all you want!
Another "actor mortality" example on HarsherInHindsight.Western Animation:
- The entire premise of Count Duckula became really unfunny for Latin American viewers due to the violent deaths of Luis Alfonso Mendoza (who voiced the titular character in said region) and Miguel Ángel Ghigliazza (who provided the voice of the narrator).
While I don't follow Latin American voice actors that much, actors playing undead characters who die years later is such a flimsy comparison, as with the shows whole premise becoming upsetting/darker due to later developments that otherwise have nothing to do with the show proper. This looks like a pretty easy cut if I'm being frank.
"It's requested that your death ends here, now!" - Sayaka, Death end re;Quest Code Z.
Done. Should I send the original troper (Sharpe-Fan2) a misuse notifier?
Some from Bob's Burgers:
- In "Flu-loise", the family melts Louise's beloved Kuchi Kopi doll. While the toy did appear before, this episode just happens to make Kuchi Kopi both as an In-Universe series and as one of Louise's possessions plot-relevant. A lot of the episode involves the family frequently shortening the character's name to just "Kuchi"— which just so happens to be a homophone with the not-particularly-vulgar euphemism "coochie," a word that surged in use
around the start of the 2020s. This can add a lot of additional humor for some people when characters spout lines such as "hot Kuchi."
- In "Flu-loise", the family melts Louise's beloved Kuchi Kopi doll. While the toy did appear before, this episode just happens to make Kuchi Kopi both as an In-Universe series and as one of Louise's possessions plot-relevant. A lot of the episode involves the family frequently shortening the character's name to just "Kuchi"— which just so happens to be a homophone with the not-particularly-vulgar euphemism "coochie," a word that surged in use
I am VERY certain that this was intentional. Bob's Burgers frequently does sexual humor, like the scene in the movie when Linda does kegels to avoid falling from a roof. Actually, speaking of the movie, I seem to remember a scene when Linda calls the doll "coochie coochie" and has to be corrected, with the sexual meaning being the joke. And I remember "coochie" being used as slang for the vagina well before 2020.
- "Nice-Capades" has Felix demanding to perform an erotic dance during an ice show, which he does in a black see-through over the sound of Calvin's piano. This is absolutely hilarious as, after a year, Yuri!!! on Ice would focus on an ice skater that performs a very sexual routine on ice as his signature song, wearing a dark spandex with a lot of see-through parts. His second, less sexual theme, is entirely played on a piano.
I think eroticism is a recurring trope in ice dancing/skating. And this compares two different Yuri scenes to a single Bob scene, which feels like a stretch.
- Topsy the Elephant was sold by P.T. Barnum to Thomas Edison, which makes it rather hilarious that Gene made a musical where Thomas is the hero, despite killing animals (though Topsy was killed by one of his inventions, rather than the man himself). About six years later, they made a musical where P.T. Barnum is portrayed as a hero to the disabled, despite abusing them in real life. What's really ironic is that both Gene's musical and The Greatest Showman were praised for their music.
Now this one I'm less certain about, because a musical that whitewashes a historical figure is something pretty specific. But if we do keep it, this misuses "irony"-there's nothing "ironic" about the music in both being good.
The other examples on the page seem valid: they involve Bob's actor watching two people have sex and calling it a threeway, a specific situation Teddy talks about in an episode; a musical adaptation of Working Girl, like the episode "Work Hard or Die Trying Girl"; and an incident on Ru Paul's Drag Race, where boxed butterflies died en masse like in the wedding episode of Bob's.
I always thought it was odd the page treated "coochie" as new slang. I think it's at best Accidental Innuendo but knowing the show it could very much be intentional, like you said.
Not sure about Yuri On Ice because I could see people associating it with that show specifically due to it being the most prominent erotic ice skating cartoon, but maybe the imagery is too generic?
I'm unsure about the Topsy one. I guess it could be seen retroactively as a Greatest Showman parody, and the direct link to the historical figures is helpful, but the episode IIRC doesn't mention Barnum, and Historical Hero Upgrade isn't uniquely associated with P.T. Barnum.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.![]()
The first is very clearly an intentional innuendo (I haven't even seen the episode, but there's no way lines like "hot Kuchi" were unintentional), and the second is Fan Myopia. Unsure about the third one, but the connection seems kinda weak to me.
This was recently added to Once Upon a Studio:
- Harsher in Hindsight: That Asha, the protagonist of Wish (2023) - which this short was originally supposed to play theatrically before, as both projects were marking the Disney centennial - prominently features in the finale can feel like this after the movie's poor critical and box office reception (even in the Disney fanbase, the short was received far better than the film).

I agree. I don't like when our bureaucratic approach takes precedent over Audience Reactions describing, well, audience reactions. Things the audience and/or creators objectively felt that you can find people discussing online.
I think a lot of 9/11 examples are tethered to what was recency bias at the time, same with Hurricane Katrina examples and COVID examples and all the other tragedies, but there's definitely some that stood the test of time, including the Simpsons New York episode. I've seen conspiracies about that 9-cents brochure, and it's dumb to take seriously, but we can acknowledge when such coincidences make people cringe.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.